


fragments.

by thewinterking



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Drabbles, M/M, Monster Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, Soldier Enhancement Program, Suicide mention, split eras
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-03-24
Packaged: 2019-04-06 19:24:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14063835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewinterking/pseuds/thewinterking
Summary: Love and other punishments, a memoir by Gabriel Reyes.Unorganized drabbles.





	1. one.

**Author's Note:**

> chapters will vary in length. despite the "fragmented" nature of this, all chapters are pieces of one single story.

 

 

_To be made._

Here in the dark, he has time to ruminate on the phrase.

To be made. To be created. To be born: an egg undergoing mitosis, splitting cells and taking form. Zygote into embryo, embryo into fetus. The body prepares for a spine before it thinks of the heart. Lungs come later. Limbs are an afterthought. Each new piece fits together jagged and perfect: muscle stretched over bone, wiry sinew, unblemished skin. Genetic success against insurmountable odds.

How many have crawled from the womb with wide, lidless eyes and disfigured bodies? How many of those failed to, on some level, look remotely human? He thinks of skinned creatures in bloodied heaps, gasping to fill malignant lungs. As they suffocated before horrified onlookers, did they understand what they were? Do monsters know they’re monsters?

He tries to breathe in and feels only the weight of smoke. Are there eyes watching him? Is he dying? 

Seconds pass — or maybe it’s minutes, hours, days. There’s no sense of time here. Maybe this is Hell, but purgatoryfeels more apt.

He begins again. Recapturing the evading thought is sluggish work; he pictures himself stretching out hands and grasping blindly, only his fingers, wrists and forearms are gone. He’s left only with tendrils of vapor.

 _To be made_ , he wants to sigh. Now he remembers: he was not conceived, but conceptualized.

In the beginning, there were nameless doctors and faceless generals. He was made in a white room under fluorescent lights and ushered awake by the bite of a needle. Restraints shackled his wrists to the bed rails for reasons beyond him. If he had eyes to look, would scars dot his arms? Or would he instead find a branding mark in the form of three letters, each slanting boldly where veins once ran?

They — not the kind faced couple from Los Angeles or some waterlogged creature crawling to shore for the first time — were his true progenitors: _S-E-P._  His ruined mouth splits open to spell it, but he hasn’t a tongue.

So tendrils splay out again, vainly trying to cling to the words _Soldier Enhancement Program_ and what that must mean. If he takes his mind from the task, he won’t remember the medical procedures or the cuffs chaining his wrists or Jack —

_Jack Morrison. Bloomington, Indiana. Roman Catholic. Youngest member of the SEP. He wanted to kiss me in Omaha —_

“Christ,” a woman calls gruffly. He can’t see her, but her voice rings out like a clarion bell. He’s not alone. “His vitals are going haywire. I don’t want another incident. Wipe him.”

Another joins hers. “So soon? He hasn’t even fully regenerated.”

“Do you want to be responsible for subduing him when he does?”

Silence answers.

“Wipe him.”

The doctor affords him three seconds to consider his options. He thinks _escape_ , and his body ignites in pain.

 

 


	2. two.

The dosage should have killed him. Doctors said thirty milligrams was enough to induce a coma. Sixty was lethal. A triple shot of _Atraximab_ should have stopped his heart the moment it hit his veins.

“Lab error,” a nurse later explains, her smile thin and practiced. “You know how these things go.”

He doesn’t.

The chaplain offers a different answer. He sheds his lab coat and stethoscope in the doorway, smooths a wrinkle from his cassock shirt, and rights his metal crucifix.  

“It’s a miracle you survived,” he declares, snapping a smile Gabriel’s way. “God’s keeping a close eye on you, son.”

Gabriel can’t voice a laugh. His throat is raw and dry, and the noise he lets loose is reedy at best.  He hasn’t had a drink in twelve hours. They have him on a saline drip for hydration and ice chips are out of the question; his hands are cuffed to the bed rails.  

“God’s got nothing to do with it,” he rasps.

“No? That would’ve killed anyone else.”

Under the man’s stare, Gabriel feels pinned. Caged. This is a conversation he’d rather have sitting up, but when he tries to move the cuff rattles and he remembers himself.  His prone position, like ninety milligrams of _Atraximab_ , is no accident.

“Guess I’m not just anyone else.”

The chaplain exhales sharply. “How’s that tough guy act working out for you?”

“Look, I don’t believe in god, so put your coat back on, do your evaluation, and let me sleep, _Doc._ ”

Gabriel can almost hear the mechanical calibration occurring in his head. The man stops cold. His eyes peel away from Gabriel and scan the room. It reminds him of old comedy troupes putting on shows during the first days of the Crisis. The army had no budget for big name celebrities; even if they had, no one wanted to be out there.

They actors would do that, too — search the stage, the audience, the obliterated city skyline behind them in search for inspiration.

But where they’d come up short, the chaplain does not. He grabs a chair and rolls it to Gabriel’s bedside. His expression softens, morphing into deep concern.

“I’m not here as a doctor, Reyes,” he starts. “I’m just a pastor right now. Anything we talk about…  anything you want to say to me stays off the record.”

Gabriel’s eyes skate over the bed rail and catch the glint of his crucifix. It’s ugly up close. The cross is wide and featureless. Its necklace is a beaded chain, the same kind used for dog tags. 

“Think I’ll stick to _Doc_ if that’s alright with you.”

Doc’s mouth twitches. The spasm flips a switch on his demeanor, turning off _concern_ for cool dispassion.  

“Alright.” His legs outstretch and his hand plunders into his wrinkled pocket. He digs out a pen and its sharp _click_ signals an end to all the bullshit. “If that’s how you prefer it.”

_Yeah,_ Gabriel thinks, _that’s how I prefer it_.

Doc plucks the file from Gabriel’s bedside. The rustle of paper grates especially loud — he’s been dogged by paperwork since his admission to the program, and never once has he laid eyes on it.

“Let’s see...” 

Gabriel’s head lolls back against his stale pillow. Sweat beads under his neck and arms, staining his hospital gown. He knows he stinks and he knows how he must look — chained down, belly up, waiting for Doc to stick him with psychoanalysis like a butcher sticks a pig.

He inhales deeply and exhales slow. His eyes trace the pockmarked tiles in the ceiling. There must be thousands of holes punctured in them. _One, two, three, four, five_ …

“Soldier 24, huh,” interrupts Doc, flipping another page.

“Should’ve been soldier number one.”

 The flipping stops. “That right?”

“That’s right.” _Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen_ …

Doc hums. His pen scratches something down, then it’s back to page turning. Each garbled slice of paper sets Gabriel’s teeth on edge.

_Twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one…_

“Your file says you’re a West Point graduate. Admitted at seventeen, served two tours when the Crisis broke. Shame you didn’t learn humility somewhere in there.” 

“What can I say? Lethal triple shot — you said it yourself. Fuckin' miracle. That’s something to be proud of.”

“That’s God, not you.”

“And god made us all in his image. Looks like he got it right with me.”

Doc’s teeth snap together behind his thin lips. Gabriel gets to _forty-nine_ before the man’s voice cuts through the silence.

“They told me to expect wit, soldier.” His pen rolls over a paper in the file harshly, scribbling out a note that no doubt paints Gabriel in poor light. “How’s your sleep?”

“No complaints here,” Gabriel fires back.

Doc’s pen scratches another note. “Any agitated feelings? Tension?”

“Nope.”

“You lost control yesterday. You still experiencing that?” 

“ _Nope_ ,” he repeats more forcefully.

“What about feelings of despair. Have you had any suicidal thoughts?”

Gabriel tests the cuff against the bed rail. It rattles louder, but doesn’t give. “Only when we’re squeezed at an extraction point with a jet five minutes out.”

Doc stops writing. He stares openly now, searching for some crack in Gabriel’s facade he can needle and exploit. “Your CO says you’re good out in the field. Unshakable.  The other men look up to you?” 

Annoyance pinches Gabriel’s gut. “Why don’t you ask them?” 

“I’m asking you.”

The _pinch_ swells and spreads. He can feel irritation worming its way in his chest, like a thin tendril.

“If that’s what my CO says, then I guess it’s true. 

Doc’s stare lingers for a second more and Gabriel has the sense that he’s trying to root something out. Whatever he wants, he’s not getting.

“Well,” Doc finally declares after a beat, “looks like there’s nothing wrong with your head, Reyes. You won’t get any trouble from me.”

Doc looks away first. His eyes slide to the cuffs holding Gabriel’s wrists, then finally down to his page. He scratches one final note in his file, then slips it shut.  It goes right back on his bedside, just out of reach.

“Be glad you’re not the first soldier,” Doc says, standing up to slide his lab coat back on. “Soldier number one — she died three weeks ago outside of Buffalo. Heart stopped.”

The tendril snakes around his own heart. He wonders distantly if she felt this — the anger, the tension, the sudden smoke churning in his gut. Did they give her a triple shot of _Atraximab_ , too? Was  _Atraximab_ even what they pumped in his veins?

Maybe he’ll drop dead on a recon mission outside of Dallas. Maybe they’ll put him down before then.

Gabriel looks back to the ceiling and searches for shapes in the pockmarked tiles. “Wasn’t fit for the crown, I guess.”

“It’s possible.”

Doc turns on his heel and heads for the door. He gets it open, but stops short in the doorway. 

“24 suits you, though.”

Gabriel doesn’t have to look at Doc to see the same wry, humorous expression stretch across his face. His fist curls.

After ninety milligrams of _Atraximab_ , they pumped his system with more drugs. Sedatives, mood stabilizers, and anything that might flush out the rage. He had already overturned the med-bay and assaulted three staff members before they got him cuffed.

But, they didn’t get all of it.

One good hit would wipe that expression off Doc. One good hit would put him in the ground.

“You’re like the midnight hour toiling, Reyes.”

“Yeah,” Gabriel rasps spitefully, “and I’m gonna ring in a new goddamn day, Doc.”

“I’ll bet.” 

He leaves, but the slow bloom of anger does not.


End file.
